A group of our volunteers, open water swimmers, are hoping to raise as much as possible for a very worthwhile local charity.

The Royal Highland Education Trust (Clyde) is open to all schools and youth groups in North and South Lanarkshire, and Glasgow. Our aim is to get pupils from the ages of 6 to 18 out of the classroom and onto farms to learn about food production. We let them experience the sights and smells of the countryside which not only helps their education of where food comes from, it gives them more respect for the countryside.

If the school cannot come to the farm, then the farmer will come to the school. We have a group of volunteer farmers who will visit the children in educating where and how crops are grown and animals raised. We particularly enjoy working with those children who have disabilities, special needs or under privileged. Seeing the joy and expressions on their faces is something that open to all of us, but just needs the organisation and time from the charity's dedicated team to enable this. That’s where we come in at RHET (Clyde). We work in co-ordination with schools and education authorities but are self-funding, hence the need for our little band of 6 brave souls to try and swim as far as they can in Loch Lomond.

Your help is needed and a donation of any size to this fantastic local charity would go a long way to putting lots of smiles on lots of faces. Giving them something special to remember, and in return the respect of the environment that they will grow up and live in.